Abilene Motor Express....A New Place To Call Home

Anyone know if we can park overnight at Green Mountain in Windsor VA?. Truck stops are scarce over that way so don't want head there and not find parking.

 

I don't think you can. I haven't seen any there overnight. You can park at the Dairy Queen in Windsor. Just drop your trl at GMC and bobtail there. There's also a Stuckeys in Ivor.

 

Unless things have changed since the last time I was there, they don't have yard jockeys. So it is unlikely that anyone will come and actually roust you out if you spend the night off in a dark corner and out of everybody's way.

 

That said, I would just go to the Love's in Franklin. It's not that far away, and they almost always have parking. Plus, they have Bojangles. And that's definitely worth the trip.

 

Thanks, it's a drop not due til tomorrow so probably best to hit a truckstop tonight and drop it tomorrow.

 

I stopped at the Loves, it's a lot closer than I thought which is why I was considering parking at consignee.

This has been a week of firsts for me as I have been to a couple regular customers that I have never been to before.

 

When you come up 258 and get to the Dairy Queen, wave at my place as you turn onto 460.

 

Did your GPS give you any stick about getting there?

The road on which the Loves resides was truck-restricted, presumably right up until they put a truck stop there. Now you can't (legally) drive past the Loves into town, but you can at least drive your 18-wheeler to the establishment which exists for the primary purpose of serving 18-wheelers and their drivers.

However, my GPS has not yet got the memo. It thinks that road is off-limits to my commercial motor vehicle, and tries to route me along this incredibly circuitous path that adds about 20 minutes of drive time AND pulls me directly through Franklin (which IS still illegal for commercial motor vehicles) instead of just, y'know, taking the exit that's right there by the truck stop.

GMC doesn't have much to recommend it, honestly. When I went there the last time, my load assignment said that it was a drop rather than a live unload. Okay, groovy, I'm gonna show up two hours early, drop the trailer, and be on my merry way.

Oh but they won't let you do that, because they don't have yard jockeys. They require you to drop your trailer in a door. Which won't be available until your appointment time. So showing up two hours early just means that you get to sit in their yard for two hours waiting for your door to become available.

Where else have you been for the first time this week?

 

My week since my last update has been pretty routine.

- Deadhead from Jacksonville to Savannah, GA, to pick up a trailer from one Target DC and take it to another in West Jefferson, OH.

- Deadhead back to Wytheville yard to pick up a trailer full of Gatorade to take up the road to the Target DC in Stuart's Draft, VA. This turned out to be a pain, because the trailer was front heavy and I couldn't get my drives legal even though I was legal on the gross. So I had to take it back to Gatorade, where it took them three-and-a-half hours to reload me. By my reasoning, I shouldn't have had to go back at all, so I put in a detention request for the whole 3.5 hours.

- Deadhead back to Gatorade to take another load to Indy.

- Deadhead to Groveport, just around the corner from Boar's Head, to pick up a load of latex gloves to take to the Wytheville yard.

- Hook a reefer full of Mack truck parts to take to Elkridge, MD.

- Scoot across town to Baltimore to pick up a load of plastic kitty litter jugs to bring down to Richmond. There were eight other trucks already there when I got there, including two other Abilene trucks. According to the guy doing the loading, all of the trucks were for the same order, and were taking them to the same place (a warehouse in Richmond). Ended up sitting there for four hours, so I put in detention for two hours.

- And now I'm sitting at a travel plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike with a load of rolled aluminum going to Perth Amboy in the morning. And hometime starts Friday, so hopefully they'll get me back down to Richmond before afternoon rush hour traffic hits DC.

This weekend, particularly Sunday and Monday, are supposed to be seriously heavy traffic days due to the solar eclipse that's going to cut square across the middle of the US. I predict that I-81 in particular is going to be a nightmare. So may want to allocate some extra drive time to get where you need to be.